New Chicago voice

If you're like many newspaper readers, the first thing you scan on the Tribune's Editorial page is the cartoon. We wouldn't have it any other way.

The Tribune has been home to some of the best political cartoonists in the business. They've entertained, informed and infuriated readers for generations. Four Tribune cartoonists -- John T. McCutcheon, Carey Orr, Dick Locher and Jeff MacNelly -- won Pulitzer Prizes.

Stantis, 50, has been the editorial cartoonist for The Birmingham (Ala.) News since 1996. His work is syndicated to more than 400 newspapers.

"Clearly I'm honored, I'm thrilled, I'm proud," Stantis said. "What a remarkable lineage to step into. And not to mention the chance to get my teeth into the local issues there. I can't wait. Absolutely cannot wait."

You've seen Stantis' powerful work on these pages before. But as of Sept. 1, you'll be seeing a lot more of it.

Stantis will focus on local and state government and politics, as he has in Birmingham because "it's non-stop and it's very, very rich."

From the earliest days of this newspaper, political cartoons, often running on Page 1, have skewered corrupt politicians, their cronies and an endless parade of feckless bureaucrats.

When two of Chicago's most famous pols, "Bathhouse" John Coughlin and Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna, threw a lollapalooza of a 1st Ward political fundraiser in 1908, cartoonist McCutcheon unsheathed his pen: At the party's entrance, Coughlin is depicted wearing a tuxedo and a crown, holding a club aloft, and pointing at a large barrel for donations, with this sign attached: "Guests Not Contributing Voluntarily Will Regret It!"

That's a cartoon about corruption that Chicagoans can still understand a century later.

Cartoons provoke people, and not only to anger. McCutcheon drew a cartoon that showed a lone soldier in World War II, head buried in hands because he hadn't received a letter from home. He was surrounded by a crowd of joyful solders waving their precious mail. That cartoon provoked one reader to write 11,384 letters to men in the service.

McCutcheon won a Pulizer Prize for cartooning in 1932, the first Tribune staff member to receive journalism's most coveted award.

One of his 1931 cartoons particularly resonates today, although it was drawn in the depths of the Great Depression. Under a banner that reads "A Wise Economist Asks a Question," a squirrel perches in front of a ragged man, who is labeled "Victim of Bank Failure." The squirrel asks: "But why didn't you save some money for the future, when times were good?"

The man's rueful response: "I did."

In the 1930s and '40s, Col. Robert R. McCormick was publisher of the Tribune and the cartoonist Carey Orr joined McCutcheon. "Orr's style was hard and simple, direct as a mace," wrote Frank Waldrop in the 1966 biography "McCormick of Chicago."

Cartoonist Joseph Parrish, Waldrop wrote, "had a wit sly as Mickey Mouse, but the effect was ruinous. No man can feel too grand after having seen himself portrayed to millions with his pants fallen down."

Some of the most powerful editorial cartoons also are hilarious.

Take the send-up of the IRS 1040 form by MacNelly, which is republished on these pages every year. It never loses its bite.

As a Tribune editorial concluded when MacNelly died in June 2000: "Even when you believed MacNelly was absolutely, fundamentally, unequivocally wrong, you couldn't help but chuckle."

The late Des Moines Register cartoonist Ding Darling once said: "If you want to let the air out of a balloon, a needle is just as effective as a meat ax."